December 30, 2014

Now here's a thing. It appears that UCU has settled its costs dispute with Ronnie Fraser's lawyers, Mishcon de Reya, out of court.

The last I had read of this case was on the Israel advocacy site, Engage, where David Hirsh said that

The hearing for costs will take place next Wednesday, the first day of Channukah. Nobody is expecting a miracle.

The first day of Channukah was 17 December 2014 but I didn't see anything about the hearing then or since until I did a bit of googling just now. I found just one source for the out of court settlement of the costs issue and that was the Jewish Chronicle dated, 24 December, or Christmas Eve or even the last day of Channukah. Maybe Hirsh was confused, I don't know. Anyway, here's the JC:

A union which won an employment tribunal brought by a Jewish academic
who claimed he had been harassed has agreed an out-of-court settlement
in its own claim for costs.

The University College Union said it had agreed a deal with Ronnie
Fraser’s lawyers Mishcon de Reya after long-running legal argument.

Mr Fraser, director of Academic Friends of Israel, lost his tribunal
last year after claiming the union’s anti-Israel stance amounted to
harassment.

The battle for legal costs had subsequently gone on for more than a year, with the UCU trying to recover around £600,000.

In a statement issued on Tuesday night, the union and the law firm
said: “The costs application by the University and College Union against
Mishcon de Reya has been settled on confidential terms to the
satisfaction of the parties.

“The University and College Union has, as a result, withdrawn its application against Mr Fraser.”

Mr Fraser and his wife thanked supporters for their backing over the past three and a half years since the case began.

I'm a bit confused here. See this bit:

The costs application by the University and College Union against
Mishcon de Reya has been settled on confidential terms to the
satisfaction of the parties.

Followed by this bit:

The University and College Union has, as a result, withdrawn its application against Mr Fraser.

I think the original judgement hinted that Fraser was really a front for other more powerful players and if Marcus Dysch's JC report is accurate then maybe Mishcon de Reya has admitted as much.

December 08, 2014

Oi gevalt! What's that they say about the wheels of justice? It turns out the hearing today regarding the FUCU case costs hearing, wasn't the costs hearing itself. It was the application of Ronnie Fraser to appeal against an earlier ruling that the case could be heard in 2 days. The Fraser side wanted every piece of "evidence" re-examined to show how valid the case was. The original case took 20 days. And, Israel advocate, David Hirsh, says it's the UCU trying to punish Ronnie Fraser.

Anyway, the people hearing the appeal today would not grant leave to appeal or put another way, we don't need no re-Ron. H/T Gil Scott Heron

NB this was a hearing to gain leave to appeal this previous decision
to allow a summary hearing of costs, it was not the appeal itself.

The Appeal Judge did not give leave to appeal. He refused to overrule the lower Judge’s determination that a fair hearing for costs can be carried out in two days.

In a verbal judgment, he seemed explicitly to close ranks with the
lower Employment Tribunal Judges. He went out of his way gratuitously
to praise the Snelson Judgment, saying that it was “very well written”.
He quoted, apparently approvingly, the most trenchant and absurd
paragraphs of the Snelson judgment, the ones which led to the recusal.
He praised the chair of the new tribunal Judge Wade’s decision that a
fair hearing for costs can be carried out in one day of reading and one
day of argument, with no new evidence, no witnesses, relying mainly on
the Snelson judgment which itself went far beyond its remit in the
determination of facts and offered opinion about the bad faith,
underhand intentions and wastefulness of the whole action.

The hearing for costs will take place next Wednesday, the first day of Channukah. Nobody is expecting a miracle.

So I presume the appeal won't happen now so it's full steam ahead to the costs hearing itself.

UCU is in court again today looking to make Ronnie Fraser pay
hundreds of thousands of pounds for daring to challenge its
antisemitism.

The original tribunal, led by Judge Snelson, found that
nothing that ever happened in the UCU was antisemitic and that Fraser
was raising the issue of antisemitism in bad faith in order to get an
underhand advantage in the Israel/Palestine debate.

The Tribunal didn't actually say that "nothing that ever happened in the UCU was antisemitic" or even "that Fraser
was raising the issue of antisemitism in bad faith in order to get an
underhand advantage in the Israel/Palestine debate" though, to be sure, there were hints of that throughout the judgement (pdf).

Mr Fraser, the child of refugees who fled Nazi Germany, is viewed as a
“sincere witness”, but the tribunal notes his “political experience” and
are not impressed by his claim that the tone of several debates at the
UCU’s annual congress “violated his dignity”, thereby constituting
harassment......

Scorn is also invoked for Mr Julius’s decision to pursue certain points,
with complaints variously dismissed as “palpably groundless”,
“obviously hopeless” and “devoid of any merit”.

It doesn't quite tally with the claim made by Engage's Dr David Hirsh.

Anyway, let's remind ourselves of where we're at with this costs claim. UCU entered a claim for costs on the grounds that Ronnie Fraser's action was frivolous and vexatious. Fraser's people argued that the original tribunal members had already indicated where they stood on the question of costs and the original tribunal recused (absented) themselves as their judgement, whilst not taking a position on liability for costs could have been understood that way by others.

So here we have another tribunal to rule on whether UCU or Ronnie Fraser should pick up the tab for what was for the zionist movement a disastrously ill-advised action.

THERE
WILL BE A PICKET FROM 6 pm ORGANISED BY PALESTINE SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN

Mordechai Kedar is a Professor at Tel
Aviv’s Bar Ilan orthodox religious university. The statement by
Kedar that the mothers or sisters of ‘terrorists’ should be raped breaks new
ground, even for the religious Orthodox. Israel's Ha'aretz
newspaper reported on 22nd July 2014 that 'Professor'
Kedar called for the sisters or mothers of 'terrorists' to be raped as a
deterrent. Leaving aside the fact that 2,000 Gazan civilians, including
over 500 children, were murdered by Israeli bombing during the
summer. The idea that someone’s sister or mother should be raped as
a deterrent or punishment is so abhorrent that it defies comprehension.

This Nazi style pronouncement is just one of the
barbarous and misogynist announcements of the settler and religious right in
Israel today. It follows the pouring of petrol inside the mouth
of a boy aged 16 because 3 settler teens were kidnapped and killed, as if one
in any way justified the other. It
comes as a reign of terror is being instituted by settlers, with the support of
the Israeli army, across the West Bank. Israeli Arabs are also now being killed
regularly by the Police on demonstrations, whereas Jewish demonstrators are
never met with live bullets.

At uch short notice it will be interesting to see how many Palestine Solidarity supporters join the picket.

November 24, 2014

The first London Palestine Film Festival was held at the School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in Spring 1999. In response to
public interest, the organisers decided in 2004 to establish the
Palestine Film Foundation (PFF) as a body dedicated to the coordination
of the festival and to the archiving of audiovisual materials related to
Palestine.

The PFF is a nonprofit initiative which seeks to develop an audience for
and to encourage the development of a Palestinian cinema and cinema
related to Palestine. It is managed by a network of academics, curators,
filmmakers, and volunteers from Palestine, the UK and elsewhere.

In addition to the annual festival, the PFF coordinates film and video
related tours, special screenings and film linked seminars throughout
the year and across the UK. These activities allow the PFF to introduce
innovative and important works of documentary and fiction to new
audiences and to provide a forum for visiting artists to engage UK
audiences with work that is otherwise seldom screened.

From 2012, the PFF began developing a new web portal designed to
increase access to its expansive archive of film and video related
resources. Funding is currently being sought for this new online
platform for research, exhibition, and distribution, with the site
expected to launch in summer 2013.

The PFF relies on charitable donations, partnerships, and funding to
deliver its projects. Please consider making a secure donation to the
PFF using the button at the left of this page.

November 28th – The World is my Country.One
key aspect of the First World War receiving little or no attention in
this year’s commemorations is the history of the people and
organisations that opposed it. We offer new insights on World War One
and its objectors with poems and songs commissioned by Peace News and introduced by PN’s Emily Johns. In addition, there’ll be great anti-war songs and more from acclaimed singer songwriter Leon Rosselson. Jenny Lewis will be reading from her collection, Taking Mesopotamia, published this year by Carcanet
and inspired by her search for her lost father—who led his troops
across the desert by starlight in the ill-fated Mesopotamian campaign of
World War One and died in the Second World War when Jenny was a few
months old. Jenny Lewis (below) trained as a painter at the Ruskin
School of Art before reading English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. She has
published three collections of poetry as well as two pamphlets with the
Iraqi poet Adnan Al-Sayegh. She teaches poetry at Oxford University. ‘Taking Mesopotamia in one slim volume mines a rich seam from the Epic of Gilgamesh via Welsh mining communities and the First World War to the most recent Iraq wars.’ (Poetry Society)

Items from the floor, especially on themes of peace and war, welcomed.

November 08, 2014

Southbank, London, 5 November 2014.
A lively and colourful 50 person-strong protest outside the BFI
(British Film Institute) condemned the BFI for hosting an
Israeli-sponsored film festival only weeks after Israel committed
mass-murder, killing 2100 people, including over 500 children during its
51-day assault of Gaza.

Called by a new initiative, No Israeli Funding of the Arts
(NIFA) [1], protestors from all walks of life, including Muslim, Jewish
and Israeli, chanted and spoke out against the UK Jewish Film Festival
(UKJFF) because it had insisted on accepting Israeli funding – in the
midst of Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of murder,
extermination and persecution and incitement to genocide[2] – even when offered alternative funding.

Protestors
spoke out against the presence of Secretary of State for Culture, Sajid
Javid, at this opening gala of the UKJFF – he had slandered opponents
of Israeli funding of the film festival by implying they were guilty ofantisemitism. The tiny Zionist counter-protest used the same slur.

Protests
against the film festival at the Tricycle last year called for it to
reject Israeli funding, and this summer the Tricycle made its courageous
decision to reject the tainted funding. Last night’s protest publicised that over 500 artists and theatre practitioners hadpublicly
defended the Tricycle from the false accusation of antisemitism when it
had offered to replace Israeli funding so that the film festival could
take place there.

Public
protest had already closed down an Israeli-funded theatre company at
the Edinburgh Fringe. Besides the Tricycle, the Bristol Encounters Film
Festival and artists from Sao Paulo Art Biennial had all rejected
Israeli Embassy funding in this last period.

There will be further protests against the Israeli-funded film festival.

November 06, 2014

Protest
the Israeli-funded UK Jewish Film Festival (UKJFF) taking place between
6-23 November in cinemas in Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester and Nottingham.

NO
ISRAELI FUNDING OF THE ARTS

DEMAND
“NO” TO ISRAELI SPONSORED FILM FESTIVAL

Protest
@ BFI Southbank

Thursday,
6 November 6.45-8pm

Belvedere Road, South
Bank, London SE1 8XT

Tubes: Waterloo (South Bank exit),
Embankment and Charing Cross

bring
your banners, placards, megaphones & chants!

The
Israeli Embassy is a sponsor of the UK Jewish Film Festival (UKJFF). Only a few weeks ago the Israeli state again
slaughtered the people of Gaza: over 2100 killed, over 500 were children.

Destroyed flats,
Gaza City

We welcomed that the Tricycle took
a stand against the festival’s funding by the Israeli Embassy during
Israel’s 51-day assault on Gaza.
Over 500 artists and theatre practitioners publicly defended the
Tricycle.

Disgracefully,
the BFI Southbank is helping to re-brand Israel – it’s hosting the opening
gala night of the festival. Secretary of State for Culture, Sajid Javid – who slandered
the Tricycle by implying antisemitism – said he would attend. The Israeli ambassador is also expected.

Israel’s apologists attacked the
Tricycle to try to distract the public from Gaza while children were killed
in their homes as they slept, with their parents as they fled, in UN
shelters where they were told they would be safe, in hospitals, in mosques,
while playing football: by bloodied tanks, F16s, drones, bunker busters,
sea-to-land missiles, remote-controlled machine guns . . .

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine
(Sept 2014) found that Israel committed war crimes, crimes against
humanity, crimes of murder, extermination and persecution and incitement to
genocide.

Public
protest closed down an Israeli-funded theatre company at the Edinburgh
Fringe. The Tricycle, the Bristol
Encounters Film Festival, artists from Sao Paulo Art Biennial all rejected
Israeli Embassy funding.

Contact your the cinemas by phone,
email, website, leaflet or street protest, and let them know what you think
of them hosting an Israeli-funded event. Call or write to the local press
or call-in radio. (All cinema contact details are here.)

The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has demanded that The Jewish Chronicle reissue a correction to a story which made false claims about Palestine Solidarity Campaign and our director, Sarah Colborne.

The demand came after The Jewish Chronicle (JC) failed to adhere to an agreement made with the PCC that the original correction would remain on the homepage of its website for two days and two nights. After uploading the correction onto its UK News page on 23rd October, the JC then removed it later the same afternoon.

A week later, following intervention from the PCC, the JC is today (30th October) once again carrying the correction. This time, the link to the correction is on the homepage as agreed, and will remain there until 1st November.

The JC’s original story, which resulted in our complaint to the PCC, was published online on 17th July on its homepage, and was headlined Pro-Palestinian group says its supporters made antisemitic comments.

This was a completely false headline, and attributed comments to Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s Director, Sarah Colborne, which were never made.

So here's the JC's link as it appears on its homepage, The Palestine Solidarity Campaign which doesn't give much away. And here's the correction as it appears when you click on the link:

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign

In
an article published on July 17 headlined 'Pro-Palestinian group says
its supporters made antisemitic comments', we stated that the Director
of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Sarah Colborne, had said that
demonstrations against the Gaza conflict "had been used by people to
'peddle hatred and intolerance' towards Jews".

Ms Colborne had not said that. In fact, what she had said was: "The
Palestine Solidarity Campaign opposes all forms of racism, including
anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and racism directed against Palestinians
whether living in the West Bank and Jerusalem, or as citizens of
Israel." We are happy to set the record straight.

Last updated: 11:17am, October 30 2014

If they're so happy to set the record straight why did they hide the link when they did?

October 29, 2014

Protest the Israeli-funded UK Jewish
Film Festival (UKJFF) taking place between 6-23 November in cinemas in
Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester and Nottingham.

Public
protest closed down an Israeli-funded theatre company at the Edinburgh Fringe.
The Tricycle, the Bristol Encounters Film Festival, artists from Sao Paulo
Art Biennial all rejected Israeli Embassy funding.

Contact
your local (or even distant) cinema by phone, email, website, leaflet or
street protest, and let them know what you think of them hosting an
Israeli-funded event. Call or write to the local press or call-in radio to
tell them what you think of their Israeli rebranding. (All cinema contact
details are here.)

One of the opening
gala nights is at the London BFI on 6 November (see below) we will protest
their collaboration with the slaughterers of the Gazan
people.

Protest @ BFI
Southbank

Thursday, 6
November 6.45-8pm

Belvedere Road, South Bank, London SE1 8XT

Tubes:
Waterloo (South Bank exit), Embankment and Charing Cross

bring your banners, placards, megaphones
& chants!

The Israeli Embassy is a sponsor of
the UK Jewish Film Festival (UKJFF). Only
a few weeks ago the Israeli state again slaughtered the people of Gaza: over
2000 killed, over 500 were children.

Destroyed
block of flats, Gaza City

We
welcomed that the Tricycle took a stand against the festival’s funding by the
Israeli Embassy during Israel’s 51-day assault on Gaza. Over 500 artists and theatre practitioners publicly
defended the Tricycle.

Disgracefully, the BFI Southbank is helping to re-brand
Israel – it’s hosting the opening gala night of the festival. Secretary
of State for Culture, Sajid Javid
– who slandered the Tricycle by implying antisemitism – said he would attend. The Israeli ambassador is also expected.

Israel’s
apologists attacked the Tricycle to try to distract the public from Gaza
while children were killed in their homes as they slept, with their parents
as they fled, in UN shelters where they were told they would be safe, in
hospitals, in mosques, while playing football: by bloodied tanks, F16s,
drones, bunker busters, sea-to-land missiles, remote-controlled machine guns
. . .

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine (Sept
2014) found that Israel committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes
of murder, extermination and persecution and incitement to genocide.

October 15, 2014

IJAN
is centrally involved in the No Israeli Funding of the
Arts initiative – we want everyone we are in touch with to
know that the Israeli-funded UKJFF (UK Jewish Film Festival) is taking place
this year (6-23 November) in cinemas in Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester
and Nottingham.

We have written to all the cinemas – see our
letter below – and we are asking that you contact your local (or even a
distant) cinema by phone, email, website, leaflet or street protest, and let
them know what you think of them hosting an Israeli-funded event. (All cinema
contact details are at end of this email.) Call or write to the local press
or call-in radio to tell them what you think of their not caring for the
Jewish films, only for the Israeli rebranding (see below).

Check the UKJFF calendar to find when
each cinema is hosting UKJFF films.
The opening gala night is at the London BFI on 6 November – we are planning
to protest their collaboration with the slaughterers of the Gazan people.

We are writing to you as
one of the cinemas hosting the UK Jewish Film Festival (UKJFF) 6-23 November,
2014, to ask that you reconsider.

Who we areWe are a diverse group,
including Israeli and other Jewish people, most of us local to, and often in
the audience of, the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, northwest London. In 2012
local residents leafleted the cinema to oppose its hosting of the Israeli-sponsored
UKJFF; in 2013 we protested outside the Tricycle when it again hosted the
UKJFF. (The protests were called by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist
Network.)

Tricycle / UKJFFThis year, many including
ourselves, welcomed the Tricycle’s stand against the festival’s funding by
the Israeli Embassy during Israel’s 50-day slaughter on Gaza.

The Tricycle had offered
the organisers of the UKJFF replacement funding so that the film festival
could go ahead at the Tricycle. But the UKJFF refused their offer and
to dissociate itself from the Israeli government – the priority was Israeli
sponsorship, rather than the film festival.
Is the UKJFF merely a means to a political end, to give Israel a
humanist image?

Who attacked the
TricycleThe Government’s Chief
Whip, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and the Israeli
Ambassador, each publicly attacked the Tricycle for having refused Israeli
sponsorship. They slandered the
Tricycle by accusing it of antisemitism; as did donors and local councillors
who threatened to withdraw funds and involve the Charity Commission.

Who defended the
TricycleSupport came from National
Theatre director, Nicholas Hytner, acclaimed
director Lenny Abrahamson; over 500 artists, including prominent theatre
directors and playwrights, some of whom affirmed “We artists have a right to
boycott” (letter to the Stage); and note the artists’ solidarity page: “The Tricycle Theatre is Not Anti-Semitic.

In July, Scottish artists, including National Poet Liz Lochhead, signedan open letter in The Herald protesting an Israeli-funded theatre company at the
Edinburgh Fringe. After vociferous
public protest, the show closed after one performance.

Following the Tricycle’s refusal of Israeli funding,the Encounters Film
Festival in Bristol and artists from the 31st Sao Paulo Art Biennial in
Brazil also refused Israeli funding.

What
Israel’s
apologists didWhile crying antisemitism,
Israel’s apologists used their attack on the Tricycle to try to distract the
public from Gaza: from seeing Israeli politicians, religious authorities,
journalists and the public, calling for mass rape, mass murder, even genocide
of Palestinians; from the bloodied tanks, F16s, drones, bunker busters,
sea-to-land missiles, remote-controlled machine guns, that blasted schools,
hospitals, mosques, blocks of flats, children playing football; and from the
2,200 Gazans killed -- over 500 children, and half
a million displaced.

The
Russell Tribunal on Palestine found evidence of war crimes, crimes against
humanity, crimes of murder, extermination and persecution and also incitement
to genocide.

What happened to the
TricycleEven while Gaza was being
destroyed, the Tricycle was forced to retreat. But actress Maureen Lipman,
advocating for the UKJFF admitted that they knew the depth of the community’s
support for the theatre’s stand, announcing that the festival was unlikely to
go back to the Tricycle any time soon.

That
stand reaffirmed that the arts
are social and political. It was
welcomed by anti-racists everywhere. And please note: both the local council
and the Arts Council ruled out loss of funding.

What
we want you to do
The assistant manager of the Everyman cinema insisted that “refusing to host
any arts festival on political grounds will cause more harm than good.”
(Email, 10 September 2014.) The Everyman’s is not a principled position – it
is complicity and appeasement. It is
the argument of those who refused to boycott South African apartheid.

Who
knows better than Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a proponent of cultural boycott,
who said, “We in South Africa know about oppression and occupation and know
about the power of BDS” (Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions)?

We
ask that you take direction from the anti-racist, non-violent,
Palestinian-led BDS movement.

We
ask that you refuse to host the UKJFF
– not because it is Jewish, of course, but because it is funded by the
Israeli Embassy. The embassy’s job,
especially in London (the boycott “hub”) is to promote what it calls Brand
Israel – state-sponsored propaganda, designed to camouflage Israeli brutality
within a smokescreen of culture, including film festivals.

We
ask that you side with the victims and survivors of the assault on Gaza – not
be part of the cover-up of war crimes being committed against them.